There's a new philosophical current that's quickly gaining steam, even though it currently remains underground for the most part.

It's not Marxism, Fascism, or anything that resembles the leading movements of the 20th century. It's the natural response to postmodernism, and it's most likely the next frontier of human thought. It takes a while for new ideas to gradually saturate the world people live in. Normally we can expect it to take several decades for the average person to come to inhabit the world of the philosophers. Our modern "republic of letters" is beginning to consolidate a particular worldview that stands radically opposed to the current order. I'll do my best to describe it here.

Existence, strictly speaking, is one. Things become things because of our minds are geared towards relevance realization. Through this, human beings are able to "name" and differentiate the matter we interact with. This differentiation is what creates the world we live in. It shapes our thoughts, actions, and how we view and experience ourselves and our surroundings.

Society begins to wither away when people lack a common interpretation of reality to orient around. The liberal individualism we're used to slowly turns the human experience into subjective mush that completely lacks the power of giving life any meaning or purpose. Gradually, people turn to drugs, hedonism, and short-term distractions to fill the void left by the lack of a common orientation. Time begins to speed up year after year and the exception begins to occupy more and more space in people's minds. The "center" disintegrates and everything becomes an orgy of the margins. We become obsessed with the bizarre and particular, and forget that which once united us.

For a long time, capitalist consumerism and the notion of "progress" was supposed to serve as the rallying point that held society together. We lived to buy things, experience pleasure, and leave a more enjoyable world for our posterity. The economy gradually became our new religion, but it left a lot to be desired. This line of thinking made people selfish and skeptical of one another. The commercialization of everything transformed love into obligation and thus made the world a very cold, transactional place.

We believed a competitive ethos would bring out the best in everyone and offer society the greatest level of meritocracy possible. Instead, we became slaves to our own desires and ambitions, becoming servants to the economy who are always on the clock, competing with everyone and constantly comparing ourselves to others. Suicides skyrocketed. Birth rates collapsed and more people than ever started exhibiting traits associated with mental illness. That's the world we inhabit now. It's a very broken one and people are ready to turn the page.

The emerging idea seems to have a few components that are all radically opposed to the way we think about life today. They are as follows:

1 - We need to take account of the "big picture" first and subordinate every part to the whole. Forcing different parts of society to compete with each other breeds disharmony and chaos, so we should instead return to a system of caste, where people are initiated into a particular Tradition that gives their life a clearly defined purpose. No more clueless young people groping through life not knowing what to do with themselves. Every person within the society is an appetence or a master, not an employee.

2 - We remember God, who serves as the center of every civilization worthy of the name. Our lives are oriented around the creator of the situation we inhabit, the one who gave us our nature and set our destiny into motion. God is a placeholder first and foremost. Without God, anything becomes our God. We become tyrannized by our own attention which naturally gravitates towards the strange and disordered. By focusing on God, we focus on the totality of being and see how parts are all interconnected and aligned towards a common purpose.

3 - We need an Order, not a democracy. We need a regime that stands above time and historical contingency and embodies the sacred principles that orient our pattern of life. Without such an Order, we can only have tyranny. Under democratic rule, true authority gives way to naked, corrupt power and domination by special interest groups that seek to claim the whole for themselves. The Pharaoh, the Philosopher King, the Emperor etc. are all placeholders just as God is in society. Their personality is irrelevant. What matters is the cosmic function embodied by their role. The individual who lends their body to the Sacred King shrinks into the role just as the artisan and the farmer shrink into theirs. The sovereign is ironically no more free or powerful than anyone else in society, because they live to wear the mask just as everyone else does.

4 - The State, The Individual, and the Sacred are all intertwined, just as all is interconnected in general. It's impossible to truly isolate any aspect of reality. We can and should attempt to live in a world of things, but only with the understanding that things are only parts of something much larger.

5 - Competition is to be avoided because it turns every individual into a mini tyrant. Instead, we should seek cooperation, community, and interconnectedness within a Tradition that gives our life a common orientation. The things that separate us can ironically bring us together if we can understand that we all exist within a hierarchical order. When we believe that everyone is equal and fundamentally the same, the differences that naturally exist between us become barriers instead of connectors.

These are the ideas that shape our next generation of thinkers. We can thank figures like Jordan Peterson, John Vervaeke, Jonathan Pageau, and Pastor Paul Vander Klay for forming and articulating them. This is our equivalent to what liberalism was before the 18th century revolutions.